captioning performed by vitac smithsonismithsonian and assoc itr it's p it's it's my to the program. r to op to our members, suppop support thsupport t tonight's possible invitation to explore the wide range of programs here at smithsonian associates. before we begin, now is the perfect time to turn off your cell phone or anything else that might make noise during the program. thank you for doing that. in february of 2016, a team of new york times staffers discovered dozens of unpublished

photographs in the newspaper's archive. some of these were published in a hugely popular multimedia series, unpublished black history. it explored the history behind the photos garnering 1.7 million views and thousands of comments from readers. we're thrilled to welcome tonight two of the authors involved with creating the book inspired by their story, "unseen", unpublished black history from the "new york times" photo archives available for purchase and signing following the program. darcy evely is a contributing photo editor at the "new york times" and creator of "the lively morgue." and rachel ellesworns writes about race and race relations as a contributing writer for the "new york times," author of american tapestry, ancestors of my shell obama published in

2012. moderating this evening, rea el co combs. she also serves as the head of the museum earl w and ammanda stafford center for media arts. please join me in welcoming them. [ applause ] >> i would like to echo lauren's wonderful comments and say thank you so much for joining us tonight. i think we're in for a delightful conversation. i'm so thrilled to be here with both of these two dynamic women. and i want to sort of start off by asking you to kind of give us the context and situate how you were able to sort of as lauren said, uncover and find so many photographs that hadn't been published before. >> well, our co-author, dana

kennedy, another writer in the book, had come to me -- can you hear? >> no. okay. is that better? hello? okay. how are we doing? okay. everyone can hear me now. my co-author dana asked if there was something we could do that would be of interest to young african-american readers. and immediately, i thought of an idea. a couple of years prior to that, the former "new york times" picture editor john godfried morris came to visit the times and i had the opportunity to sit with him for an hour. is that is there anything in the archive that i should be going back to look for? and john immediately grew a little agitated and said go back and reedit everything. he said they didn't let us run the right pictures.

they had to edit for space constraints for the print newspaper. they had to edit for the style of the times of the day, which was a stiffer picture, somebody clearly looking at the camera and john knew what was left behind. the idea stuck with me. so when dana approached and said is there anything in there? yes, there's something in there. rachel and dana and other co-author, damian and i started with a list of names. who could we name who the times might have covered? and started with martin luther king and rosa parks and the familiar names you would expect us to start with. what happened was the discovery beyond that, the accidental finds and names we never in a million year expected, the ordinary people. that's really what drew us in. and eventually, the book started to take shape because we want to include those unknown people. >> so how long did this process take? how many photographs are we

talking about here? >> the times archive, they know they have 10 million print photographs in the archives. 10 million. of that 10 million, about a third of them are from "new york times" staff photographers, one third from the wire press and another third were handout, from theaters or corporations -- >> like publicity. >> right. in addition to that, if you have 3.5 million staff photographs, they had the negatives stored from those events. so if one print got made, there's potentially 36 frames, 35 frames left over or more in some cases and we'll show you some examples in the book. some of the photographers went out and shot hundreds of rolls of film. >> we're talking sort of early 20th century through present? >> that's right. >> we started -- i think we hired the first staff

photographers in the -- >> i believe it was 1920s but the negative's collection is pretty well intact from about the late 1940s on. there was a period of kuling in the early years unfortunately but from about the 1940s on -- >> with this sort of call to do something for black history month or related, you had this kind of thought in your mind from your conversation and then a team of colleagues came together and went through 3 million photographs? >> i get asked how many i went through -- i don't -- i really don't know. a lot. i spent months curled up on the floor with sacks of negatives and a loop going what is this? >> that sounds fantastic. >> when we started, the idea was, we would look at -- we'd have an image or series of images every day for the month

of february that was our idea. and we thought there would be amazing images never seen the light of day before, which is awesome and you'll get to see that. but it was also an opportunity for us to look at the "new york times" as an institution and about how we covered and didn't cover african-americans. so basically we were -- it was kind of a scramble in the first month or so, we're sitting around the table in january and literally, going through images. afterwards for the book. >> but the initial intention was for it to just live online? >> yes. >> and in print. >> and in print as a -- for interactivity and social engagement. >> that's right. we realized soon after though this could be more than that. there was such an incredible response to these images.

people saw themselves in some of these images and some of the parade photos and we actually asked people to engage with the images and right away people said how can we get them? and we were realizing, oh, good ns ness, we have to make these available. >> i would like to ask, how did you go about then crafting and conceptionalizing, if you have the vast amount and initial thought was unpublished work, can you kind of talk us through either how you had to triangulate the fact it was unpublished and/or how you conceptionalized how you got in -- you mentioned it was one a day. but beyond that for the book? >> sometimes we have amazing images. what's interesting to us as a process too though were the images that we couldn't find that people who weren't there and reasons why perhaps they weren't there.

and you know, there were -- most of our photographers were based in new york. so -- we had some in washington too. but we're talking about a period of time where we have most of these images from the 40s on but we did not have or have not yet to find, which might be the better way to say it when you have millions and millions, but romer bearden, the artist, richard wright, w.e.d. dubois. >> it was in the beginning about what we found -- >> really that is what it was. >> it started that way. we found one of the first things we went to look for was martin luther king. >> low hanging fruit. >> that's right. we know we shot him. >> that's right. >> it happened we started with -- i started with the most popular photo i knew, a portrait that the "times" ran, most ran it hundreds of times. i went back in to reedit the film expecting to see a portrait

series when in fact that wasn't the case. it turned out that he was at a round table event. he was speaking. he left the event and he was attacked and egged. the next day there was a page one story in the paper, right at the top of the page about the attack. happened in brooklyn. and there was no photograph. well, the photograph that was shot that day was a portrait of him. it didn't make sense for the story. so it didn't run. and when i opened up the pictures, it wasn't each a series of portraits, it was distant shots of round table event that press photographers took. they walked out and went home and the attack took place and they weren't there. >> were the photographers there? >> they went home already. got my shot, i'm leaving. i'm outta here. that to me ee pit mizs what happens sometimes when the press isn't there. >> i was just going to say. in a way that sort of speaks to what at the time perhaps was deemed news worthy.

>> exactly. >> this wasn't a news worthy picture but they probably rushed that portrait out and it was such a beautiful portrait, the next time it was needed, that was the go-to and became the go-to for 50 years. >> so that's -- you were able to find other sort of surprises even within what we would consider low hanging fruit, these sort of we know we'll have a photo of this but then there are surprise stories. >> part of what we wanted to look at too, was to think about how the choices were made. after all, these were photos -- amazing photos that had remained unpublished so why? so we have some photos of prominent people and then we looked and we talked about, well, why didn't this -- we'll show you some of these but that was kind of a lot of the exercise, was well, why? there's many, many reasons why. we were a newspaper that was dominated by text. it was not the kind of newspaper that we are now.

and i think that's what the photo editor was saying. they were limited sometimes. sometimes it was just practical, you only had so much space. sometimes you had issues with getting film somewhere and harder questions where we did wonder and darcy is the photo editor, where researchers and reporters saying why wasn't that person there. or looking at the foephoto thats published and one that didn't get published and saying, we were a big institution at a time when american his institutions marginalizing people of color. that was some of that in these instances. >> as you were speaking, i was wondering, did your research allow you to sort of look as you're theer rising as to why some images were in and some weren't, did you look at other publications like "washington post" or "l.a. times" and others and see if they ran a different image of the same story?

>> i did some research both with the daily news imagery and with the amsterdam news imagery, they covered everything and had wonderful photographers. the daily news was the picture paper. did not go through the "washington post" archives but looking more at the locals because we cover the local stories. so yeah, it was quite a difference between the coverage of the times and coverage of these other organizations. again, the gray lady. their stories were 400-word stories and ours were 1500-word stories and ours were stories and ads, so the advertising was taking up art space on the page. >> fascinating. i would love to see if maybe we can go through some of the images and there might be stories or before we get into that, i'd ask each of you, is there an image that didn't -- in this cooperative experience

where you all are working as a team, you know, trying to get these selections for the book, was there one that each of you would have loved to have seen -- been in there or story that didn't make the cut that would love to share with us? >> you talked about music, right? >> it's not a singular image. it's a category for me. we had amazing coverage of music and jazz at the "new york times." they spent a lot of envelope sending photographers to these events. and at the end of our ordering this book, we realized we had so much music that i'd left some behind. i didn't want this to be strictly a book about that genre. >> in leaning in that -- >> the collection of music photography was spectacular. >> that does beg the question though, how did you all go about conception -- not conceptional but ordering and organizing and process of sort of figuring out?

>> we didn't want a book that was going to be like politics, music, sports, we didn't want that. part of the -- part of the experience that was really wonderful for us as journalists was the discovery really. we were looking and sometimes we found stuff and sometimes we didn't. sometimes we thought we didn't have it and darcy did find it. i think we really wanted readers and viewers to have that sense of surprise. >> each page, you wanted something different and that's exactly how we found it. >> not kron logically. >> we worried it would be too heavy 1960s if we did it kron logically and the point was i found this today and i found this today. i found nothing today but tomorrow we'll find a new story. i want the reader to experience that. i want the pages to turn for people to be surprised. >> so tell us what you found. show us some of the things that

you found. >> there we go. so this -- this is the opening of the book and this is 1971, this is an organization that was based out of new york. called negro -- i forget with the akron nim was. >> there were doing works in the new york area and angry with the "new york times" that they were not covering the progress that they were making in the communities. and they accused the "new york times" at that period of only writing stories about the negative, crime every time and violence. to some extent politics, but leaving out the positive contributions that black new yorkers were making. and so the big protest gathered, that's the "new york times" building on 43rd street and that

massive gathering happened out there and as the day went on, unfortunately things turned rather violent. they lit the trucks on fire. the police came, there were dozens and dozens of arrests and this was all taking place in front of the office. well the next day in the paper, there was a big two column -- remember "the times" broad sheets, an oversized paper, big two-column story and no photographs. yet nearly every single one of the "new york times" staff photographers had gone out there that day and there were -- this blew my mind. there must have been -- 50, 40 or 50 rolls of film from this event and not a single image made the paper. it was so unbelievably violent. well, after this whole thing, a dialogue happened between "the times" and this organization and there were promises to be better at the reporting and so change you know was at least promised

at that point. but it is a fascinating thing that something so violent happened and the public never got to see it. they got to read about it. the story that was written was very detailed about the events of the day. i'll give them that. it was true to the visuals i was looking at but why not the pictures? >> and would you suspect that -- did they not want to reindescribe some sort idea around urban decay and violence and that sort of thing? >> i actually -- >> you could have run that first picture, right, if you wanted? sometimes media outlets were sensitive about perception and optics or criticism. >> there was an interesting debate dana and i did talk about this, there is always a protest out in front of the "new york times" and you're in washington and see protests in front of the "post" or any news organization. does the "times" today run out there and cover it because they are protesting that they don't

like what the "times" said about israel or something in the middle east? no. so is that the same thing that happened back then? >> the turn of events was so remarkable that you're -- it's striking that they were -- >> i think today if they lit trucks on fire we would see that. >> we would cover it. >> i hope. >> who was the photographer? >> this i believe -- i think this was arty brower. we're looking at lena horn in her apartment. >> for those of us who were writers, this was a really interesting project to work on because normally, at the newspaper, the photos come after. we go out and report and we say okay, we need this person photographed or this covered, this image or whatever. sometimes it's a working collaboration with a reporter

and photographer at the same time but often the photographer comes after we've done leg work. this the photographs were the main event. this was the point of departure. and so we had these images and we had to look at them and say, okay, well, what story is there here? and so, this was an article that ran about lena horn had a new variety show that was coming out. and so it was an interview with lena horn and the photo that ran was a tiny head shot photo of lena horn. >> it was a one column photo of her face looking straight on, no crocked head. >> there's this wonderful photo. what is the story to tell here? >> well, in the article, she mentions it's so nice to be here because it was so hard to find an apartment. and i'm thinking, it was hard for lena horn to find an apartment? i want to report on that.

no, i did. and it was of course you know, the 1950s, 1960s and lena horn, one of the most celebrated actresses and singers in the country, was a black woman who struggled to find an apartment in quts new york city. the city about how she found this beautiful apartment was a great story starts with harry belafonte who could not find an apartment and first artist to break a million albums. anyway -- >> sell. >> that's right. he got so fed up that he sent his white publicist to the building to sign the paperwork and got the apartment. when he and his wife arrived, the building manager was really mad and told them oh, well, you have got to leave. and harry got really mad and bought the building. and he invited his friends in

and lena ended up with the apartment. >> she got the penthouse. >> yeah. >> and so it was -- that's what a lot of these stories were like. it was kind of the image but then, the history told us something kind of about -- >> and rachel, was your inclination to do a deeper dive -- >> we tried. >> as much as we could, we tried to tell the story behind the photo. it required -- it wasn't just a lena looks lovely today, though she does, it was really trying to tell the story of that moment. >> and this is such a remarkable photograph in the sense that she just really looks at ease, she doesn't look as though she's performing in any way. she really does feel like i would -- at home and running this with her -- with the print would -- you would have thought

would have been the natural choice. >> one column had shot -- didn't have enough space. it was a long story they wrote. >> this was a contact sheet i found, james baldwin was on our list. we ran frame number 19 i think it's in the second column, the third one down. they ran that as the head shot to accompany the article. but when i found this object, i saw this object not as a singular photograph, i saw this as a -- almost as a movie. >> she brought it to us because we were like we need baldwin. i think i have like many baldwins so she brought this to us and immediately, her idea was, you know, we're going to depict this, the whole thing. and it was -- it just -- if you look it's just amazing. it's -- you can imagine the photographer just click click, click. and it is this mini motion picture -- >> many moods of baldwin.

>> yes. >> you can see all of his animated personality, passion and everything throughout this contact sheet. >> i wanted to give the readers of the series an opportunity to see the photos the way the photo editor saw them. why did they choose frame 19. for me looking at this right now, i would have gone for the frame down on the bottom where he's got the cigarette in his mouth. it's so expressive -- >> which is frame 19? >> frame 19 -- >> it's the smiling one -- >> is it the second column, third one down, i believe, that was the one they ran. >> no, no it is the third one 19 -- 19 is first row -- >> i can't see. >> first row, second one down. >> yes, first row second one

down. >> there he is. but that seems more of a times yan picture. his eyes are shot, would have never done that. he's smoking a cigarette, no way. and to me it just -- it says the photographer had three minutes with him and was bound and determined going to capture james balandwin. he captured him in the contact sheet better than any sing you lar frame would have. >> in doing the research about what story do i tell about this image, i started reading about -- it was just his face really that captured me. and i started doing research and realized that he had grown up with this very complicated, you know, relationship with his own face. that, you know, he grew up being told he was ugly, that he had frog eyes and that he really internalized that and struggled with that for a lot of his life.

and so it's so hard for me you see james baldwin, that's the last thing you think of. but it also just spoke to me about, you know, african-americans and how we -- internalize some of these ideas about how we look. >> standards of beauty, which he wrote about eloquently in many of thinks essays and really grappled with. but then here, again, you see all of the beautiful expression in his face and in his life. >> so the next series i wanted to show all of you is a series from our first african-american staff photographer hired by the "new york times" in 1964, don hogan charles, came on staff and he was a harlem resident. and these image, much bigger series of them in the book, but these images don was sent on assignment over a weekend on a saturday and sunday to go cover

harlem live. this was 1966. harlem was a pretty rough part of town at that point and the times wanted to show a different side of it. and very surprisingly, by monday morning, six photographs were on the front of the metro section at that point. that must have been the biggest photo essay to hit the pages. i can't even imagine. but don shot more than 100 rolls of film that weekend of his community. and so we're talking 36, 3700 -- >> yeah. >> frames. >> six made the paper. well, there were many, many more that are still left behind but don certainly captured -- >> you could have done a book? >> we could do a book just on this weekend in harlem. and i love this. i love this no ball playing permitted on the wall there and the kids are just going for it anyway. a dominos game in the street and this was a view from one of the local buildings, this is what

you saw when you looked out, cathedral of st. john the divine in the background. >> there was this -- just again, for my understanding, there was this understanding real or perceived, that harlem was just sort of this very rough -- >> forbidding. >> rough town. >> and we're seeing quite the contrary. >> absolutely different. and the pictures that ran were true to what don shot to be fair to "the times". >> and the photo on the front of the book -- >> there we go. this is one of my favorites. >> a beautiful -- >> when there's only six images to run and this essay, even though they did run so many photos took up about only one third of the page. so your pictures weren't running six column photographs the way the times does these days. they are running in 3 and 4-inch spaces. they were going for tighter photographs and things that look good at 3 to 4 inches. if you go back to this, that

would have looked like mud in the paper at the time, which is just understandable why they left it but so beautiful now and for a book. we're going a little too far. >> these works remind me of something that i read in the book that i believe sara lewis mentions as sort of a re cla reclamation that's what this feels like, throughout the text, throughout the book as you mentioned, darcy, about the ordinary. how you're already sort of looking at photos of those that we know but then also those that were less familiar. and it seems like it's a reclamation of sort of these stories of as well as the people behind those stories that is so poignant to the project, initial project and maybe this book as well. >> i think it was very important

for us -- for me especially as the photo editor, to put the voice of the photographers into this. i really wanted to see what i would now edit to be their best work i wanted that to be the edit of the day. because we edit very differently now. we edit not for space and not so much to match visual to text perfectly. but now edit to tell a secondary story that can run parallel to the words that the writer are writing. >> now, does this -- is this going to be the same for something that's running online? that only lives online and not in print? >> that's a very, very good question. because we often do edit very, very differently. and there was an example that the "times" did in the newspaper, i'm no longer a staff picture editor there, but they

had a cover of harvey weinstein and it was one image and then online they ran a very different image. it's because how the images would be perceived, they come out very differently. yes, we do edit to that extent still to this day. is it a slide show? who's seeing it? how are they seeing it? >> how are they seeing it? >> looking at it on a mobile device, those things are affecting editing these days. >> and that's different but still these questions around choice are still being made. >> absolutely. >> and who's in it and not in it. >> i think that's what these images bring to us, because it's not just historical question, it's a question that we grapple with that our viewers ask us about the choices we're making and who are we showing and what are we showing and not showing. and you know, when you look at these images and you think about the choices that were made,

harlem from don hogan charles' lens is a very different place from the forbidding harlem that we described as -- we the "new york times" described in the 1960s. so it does make you think about i think if we're true to ourselves, think about how are we doing it now? where are those blind spots. >> absolutely. >> but i also am struck by the series of three photos that you've shown us, that you know, or three or four, that he took $3600 photograph. >> unbelievable. >> over the course of a weekend. and that what he is capturing, just in this ordinary daily life, a photographer who was not from the community or neighborhood might not have -- may have overlooked some of these. >> absolutely. and probably just as important might not have been able to approach -- >> oh, that kind of goes without saying to me but yes.

>> don in the book got into the community center, don got into the bowling alley. he got into -- he knew the people. >> he knew the people. >> a lot of these people probably knew him. >> he probably -- it wasn't a surprise to see him with his camera. >> not at all. >> walking down the street with a camera, it just so happened these might make the "new york times" this weekend. >> he's an incredible talent. next in the series, this was one of my favorite finds, because of the subject. >> seems so timely. was this last week? >> this was -- this was actually the same month that the big battle over the confederate flat was happening in south carolina. and we were so shocked when we saw this because this is reverend kendall smith. and reverend smith was rather annoyed the confederate flag was still being flown in parts of

new york city. and in particular i believe it was part of a display or part of a series of flags in city hall. he went down to city hall with the confederate flag and waved it around and got mad about it and then took the flag outside to city hall park, across the street and he lit it on fire. so looking at this picture, there's city hall park. not too many people standing around. what's interesting this was about two or three or four weeks after the big protest in central park, the anti-vietnam war protests where there were hundreds of thousands of white college students burning the american flag. kendall smith was arrested for inciting riot. not much of a riot going on there. and what's even more fascinating and i don't have any arrest records from the previous event in central park, but i can't

recall reading the paper and seeing hundreds of white college students being arrested for burning the flag, the american flag. he was arrested, thrown in the clink and the next day the times" had a big article about it, two columns down the metro section. but no photos, not a single photo. they continued to write stories about his legal case. never ever publishing these photos showing there was never a riot. in fact, the text of the article was very detailed saying it was a small crowd of reporters and a photographer or two. i think the writer at one point got funny and said something about pigeons in the park. but clearly -- >> what did the headline? do you recall the headline? >> i don't remember the headline. >> did it say riot or -- >> it was a pretty straightforward -- they used to write very straightforward -- somewhat dry informative headlines but the text was clear

in describing the scene very well but never was a picture published. he eventually got off on a technicality that others weren't arrested for doing the same thing. then it wasn't in fact illegal to burn a flag at that point. and he was -- he was acquitted. >> is this his past orial cloak >> i don't know if he swiped it or paid for it, details were not given, but he wore it to emulate a ku klux klan robe. >> it's a performance piece in a way that one could -- this is -- he was arrested for inciting a riot. >> inciting riot, yes. and the pictures were so clear, the photographer had moved the camera around. i think at one point i saw a picture of the bench behind the photographer and there were three people sitting on it like this. what's this guy doing?

but it was incredible -- i wonder if the times had put this image in the paper the next day, would the -- >> would the case have gone away that afternoon? hard to say. >> and your theory around sort of editorial choices of size and space. how does that sort of fit into? >> it's a mystery. they had a two column space. it wasn't as if they had no space in the paper for the article. the page was filled with ads on the other side. they were never going to can an ad. >> clearly, right. >> understandably. why would they not put anything. >> to go along with this. okay. >> it doesn't make any sense, does it? >> no, it doesn't. >> maybe it wasn't a big enough deal. maybe it could have been some sort of bar that needed to be at a certain level -- >> maybe they needed a riot.

>> right. i'm thinking now what i do recall or how many pictures the "tim "times" had of the central park issue. >> exactly. on one hand there are benign thoughts of this was a factual kind of not enough space, the photo choice wasn't there. but then these other slippery slopes that make us sort of beg the question about sort of what other subtext, what subtext was taking place, what's happening whereby we can write two pages about this situation and we can sort of fan the flames if you will of this being this horrible sort of anti- -- what is it -- anti-american, it's not even an american flag, confederate flag. >> it's new york. >> not even the south. it's new york. >> some argue up south so there's that.

but okay. i want to pause. in the way in which we're seeing these wonderful images in this range of sort of stories, is that the same that we will expect from the book in terms of -- >> yes, a little bit all over the place. >> but there's a through line. >> yes. >> as well. >> which makes me think about the question of when you're dealing with so many years. how did you determine whether or not these had had been published or not? how did you figure out that process of? >> with each image that we found, there were three ways in which we could search the "new york times" ar kifz, the times machine which they have the ability to go in and look through actual physical copies of the paper as they were published. there's something called -- two

other ways internally to look through "times" past, internal search engine and then there's another internal search engine. then i used pro quest actually to search as well. and then eventually i also because it's so good, i did a google search on the names as well because if you googled a name in "new york times" you can see if the articles and names appear together. then finally about maybe six weeks or so before, i handed the contents over to the publisher, i literally started with the earliest picture in the book in 1940s and clicked on every single page of the "new york times" to make sure i was panicking. i hope nothing was -- what if i find published -- i'll be ruined. and i panicked about it. i have to look at every single page of the "new york times." but it is important to know and there is a section in the book that does address this. pro quest and all of the "times"

machines and any copies from the libraries as well, any copies of the "new york times," it's only the very last edition. there's a very remote possibility that an image could have appeared in a first edition paper. but there's no record of it. there's no electronic record of it. so we did address that sort of challenge in the book and figured we would proceed anyway with them as unseen unpublished because there would be no way for anybody in this audience to ever see it -- and it's not fair then to not show it. so i think that -- but we -- one other way of checking it, if a name was famous, we could go into metger's clipping files and we clipped from our own first and second editions, images that were not famous is a whole series of parade pictures. we wouldn't have clipped generic parade. but we would have clipped medgar

evers. >> you did search for names in the clip to make sure. the hardest part of the book was the vetting of the content, not the finding of the content. >> and now, you know, a photograph can tell you as much on the front as it can on the back. i think in the blog you all sort of -- used the back of the image as well. how much of that was critical in terms of helping you with your research? >> it was critical. >> or useful in determining a selection? >> i think this is a good example. this photograph which we believe is the only photograph that the "new york times" took of medgar evers, came from the lens of a reporter. the civil rights correspondent who spent a lot of time with medgar evers and others. and so he -- his notes are a lot

of what i relied on to tell the stories. and he was writing notes on the back of these images -- >> mimeographed sheets. >> they were really conversations in a way with his editor. telling him, you know, i saw this guy and here's what -- where i was and this is that what this person is. he did have photos that appeared in the "new york times" but he was a writer. and he talked too, but issues about light and shadow and oh, i wish we could get -- there had been better light. but it was really remarkable to see, you know, his notes and it gives you some insight into kind of what was going on, both in new york and out in the field. >> and did his note recommend that they actually run this? because this is an amazing

photograph. >> i didn't see anything -- at least in this series where he said run this. >> he talked about how -- apologized to his editors saying the lighting is bad and skin tones are dark. i'm not sure if this will work for you. one of the things to note, claude never intended for many of his -- some of them did run but many of them didn't. he used these photographs as reporting notes. he was out in the field and go and use his camera, get his film developed, sit back down and he would write his stories from the contact sheet. and using the contact sheet describing in great detail what the scene looked like, what the people wore. >> example of image is text as you will. >> and in some snaninstances, s of these photos you can see the story connected to them but he was writing about white nationalist, white citizens councils for example. and we never could find a story that that was connected to. it was kind of politics, white supremacy basically.

and so he took the photos but there wasn't a story we could actually find that accompanied it. >> again, i believe so much of that because he wanted to have a record of it to go off and describe it in detail later in other elements of his writing. >> also talking about you know, snail mail. i mean the process that some of these things may not have made it to the photo editor and the new york desk in time for the image if you will in terms of accompanying a story. >> here's a very good example of that. this is merle e evers and a new york times had a staff photographer based in d.c. and primarily a shooter for the magazine at that time. did he some work for the newspaper but most of the photos wound up in the magazine publication. george was at that funeral. he was at the casket. he had -- i don't know, 30, 40 rolls of film from this event

and one more spectacular picture after the other. and i can also tell from the film that george wasn't penned into a sing you lar spot the way many photographers are now. he had freedom to roam and he shot -- there's another photo that shows the crowd. he walked that room. next day the times ran a beautiful photograph but it was from the associated press. it was a broad big image, big broad image that showed the procession and the enormity. it's a famous picture. >> well known picture. >> why would they have chosen an ap photo over these staff photos when ap was in the back and we're up front. unknown. unknown. >> was it that george was doing this for a magazine feature that never ran? that's a possibility. was it the film never got back to new york in time? they had to process the film and send it -- fedex -- fax trying to say fax, fax it back to new york. why did it not get there in

time? why was it not in the paper? >> this is your opportunity, darcy as contributing photo editor for the "times" to sort of re-edit and -- >> absolutely. >> with the hindsight being 20/20, you have the opportunity to say, you know what, they didn't run it then but i'm running it now. >> i'm running it now. i feel so much for the photographers. i said in the book, in the acknowledgements, this book is really for them. they did all of this work and so few of these amazing images were shown. not just in this category, but in categories across the board. and this is truly a tribute to the great work that tames did. >> and i do think this idea now that is kind of -- image is text as well, that's another way of reading into and diving deeper into the ways in which we

understand things. it seems text was king. it was all about the text versus this kind of relationship between the way in which someone can understand a story and the complexities of a story. fascinating. >> wonderful stuff. i love this picture. dizzy was at a local school. he was working with the mary lou williams jazz foundation at that point. the school was a recipient of some of the funding. he came up to jam with kids and the next day the "new york times" had a nice article, lovely article and a photograph of a small one or two inch picture of dizzy standing there holding his horn staring at the camera. and i looked and saw this picture and i was so mad as a photo editor, how could you run

this gorgeous picture of him? i understand it, he has his eyes closed, they never would have done that. wouldn't show a picture of someone with their eyes closed, right? it was too big, you couldn't run this photograph -- >> even if you did a detail? >> the version that they ran was somewhat cropped moment of this that was just tight in on him either before or after he picked up his horn and the photographer just got him looking straight on and holding that horn. and left this one. i think it's a shame. again, it was space restraint. it was space restraint. >> this -- >> great series of photos in the book, sam foulk went to new york a week or so after the riots and there was a roll of film -- sam

shot 40 or 50 rolls of film. there was a roll of film in the negatives marked destroy and that was the one i went right for. i pulled it out and saw the whole roll was double exposed and i was so excited. one of these has to to work. and i found this one. the family in this photograph was left homeless by the riots. we tried to locate the mom. she had a very common name. we couldn't find her. but she and her children left after their home was burnt down. in the background you see the bamboo show bar, which in the 1950s was the hottest nightclub in detroit for the jazz age. all these big, big names played there. so you're seeing this superimposed image of detroit at the time at its best and its

worst. this broke my heart. i also think it's probably my most favorite photo. i think it's the most beautiful photo in the book. in the car too, having the car in there as a symbol of detroit, there's so much happening in that picture. to me it's a work of art, the kind of thing i wanted to frame and put on my wall and somebody wanted to throw this out. >> even worse you have the children there, the promise of tomorrow, the ways in which the uprising were about, who, you know, what it embodied. there's so much. >> i hope either this book, either one of the children comes forward and identifies who they are and tells the story today. >> have you had any sort of stories like that? >> yes. we have. one of the things we really wanted to do when this project was launched was for it to be an

interactive. we didn't want to just show photographs. we wanted people to connect to them and tell us their stories too. this isn't one we thought this would happen. this is an image of a school in princeton, new jersey, that recently had been integrated. and we presented the photo. and readers said, okay, nice photo, what happened to the kids? so we were like, well, we don't know. >> we went to facebook. >> yeah, so we asked readers online and on social media does anyone know who these children are and where they are now. >> boy did she have a story to tell. >> someone had been posting about these photos and shared them on -- these were folks

who'd gone to the school and someone said, evelyn, isn't that you? and she said, oh, my gosh, this is me. >> does she remember that day when the photograph was taken? >> she remembered that experience. you know, of being so excited. and she talked about being -- growing up in a part of princeton which was what people she said at the time would have described as the ghetto, but she said it was a golden ghetto. it was a place where, you know, teachers, all kinds of working people lived. and she said it was just such a wonderful -- it was a porch community. so it was a wonderful place to grow up. so she remembered going to an integrated school for the first time and what that was like. and she just remembered she talked about how there were challenges in it, you know, about for a while kids were just kids. and then things changed as they

got a little older. but she talked about just the influence -- she became an educator herself. >> okay. >> and she talked about the influence of the educators in her life and about the excitement and the joy in learning. and that's what she recognized in that first photo. >> what a fantastic story. >> it was. we were so excited. >> we had a full circle. so if anybody has recognized any of the people in these pictures, please let the ladies know. >> please. we want to hear their stories. speaking of someone's story, this is a picture, the man in the dark coat he was the first african-american man to win a pulitzer. he won for the photograph of coretta scott king at the funeral with her daughter on her lap. >> of martin luther king? >> of her husband's funeral, yes. and with him is his son greg. and greg happened to be touring

colleges. i found a sack of negatives, it's talked about diversity on college campuses. i look through the film, i didn't see anything in there that was of interest, but i came across a note stuck in the sack to the photo editor john dugan at the time and said, hey, john, you're never going to believe i ran into manetta at the shoot today, he says hi, this was about three or four weeks before he was given his pulitzer and the guys knew each other from the beat. but what was fascinating we wanted to include him in the original round and we couldn't find him in the "times" archives. we couldn't find anything unique to include in the first round of projects, so when i found this -- and i wanted to include it because to me this is an example of the enormity of the collection at the times. i mention there's 10 million prints. we think they have somewhere between maybe 400 million, 500 million negatives. they just don't know. there's no count that they've ever been able to do because the

collection is so enormous. it's arranged in such a way that a sack can contain 36 frames or 3,600 frames or more. so it's impossible for them at this point to get a count. but they think hundreds of millions of photographs. >> what i also love about this as you mentioned he's, you know, monetta, he's on his college tour. there are these kind of stock stories, either it's going to be harlem and the forbidding city, it's going to be riots, it's going to be destruction, it's going to be the mob that's homeless, but these kind of everyday moments, a tender father/son walking across a college campus occasion is just as, you know, sort of relevant

to the african-american story as the other sort of marks. and i think that the sort of i guess ordinariness of this photograph kind of really resonates for me. >> one of my favorite photos was a photo we found of ken clarke, the sociologist who was pivotal in brown v. board of ed decision, his research. that overturned segregated schools. it was just him outside smoking a pipe of his west chester suburb. it was an opportunity -- it was just him at home. >> right. >> and it was just -- it was just -- it was such a great image. and it was also an opportunity to think about how did this guy who pioneered the research on the harmful effects of segregation live out his life. and it was really interesting and complicated.

>> and i agree and echo that in the thought of, you know, this is a photographer who knew monetta. you can feel that in the access you were saying. that there was this sort of ability to take these pictures and capture these moments and sort of that unfeddered access that sometimes now as we get sort of, you know, there are so many layers that photographers have to go through to get pictures taken. >> that's true. >> i know we have short of time. >> i do want to get to the last one here and we'll speak quickly. this is another point -- >> talk about access. >> exactly. what a segue. this is the interior of malcolm x's home right after it was fire bombed. and this was by don hogan charles. and don got into the house because he was friends with the family. the "times" the next day ran the associated press photo that

showed malcolm fleeing the home. it's a wonderful picture. don't get me wrong. it's a stunning picture getting the fear on x's face, it's wonderful. but don had access inside this house and the times never ran the pictures the next day. he was, i think, the only photographer. i haven't seen other pictures from inside the home. and to me why didn't they run this? i still come back to maybe the inability to make that photograph clear in newsprint. newsprint was a 65 line screen dot, the quality wasn't particularly good. this is a very dark image. it's very hard to see. was that the reason these images got left behind? >> i mean, but the sort of you know another reading of that would have been if you could have shown two, you would have shown malcolm but then this is what he's responding to. >> it's so powerful. >> that's the table that your family eats on. everyone in america and all over the world sits at, you know, can

relate to that. someone might have in their own imagination an understanding of what they felt or who malcolm x was and his beliefs and how that may have created a distance, but an interior shot of the living room that's bombed out is going to resonate, i would think, with anybody, you know? so it's an interesting conversation. >> there's his wife in the kitchen. why wouldn't they run that? maybe it was the back of the head. >> back of the heads i would say. >> there were standards to what a picture should look like too that had to be met for the "times." finally, i wanted to get to this one. this is one of the most hysterical stories we did in this book. this is gradio cummings, claimed to be the second african-american man ever run for president. we didn't put that in the book because we couldn't confirm it.

and he was also, he was a little too young to run for president. >> maybe officially. >> he put his name in the hat, regardless grade di w regardless grady was an interesting fellow. he ran a newspaper and was written about many times in "new york times" as being this up and coming politician who is supposed to be this dynamo. and one day, maybe 10 or 15 articles down the line i come across this picture i'm researching who he is. i never heard of him. i come across this tragic obituary. grady cummings drops dead of a heart attack at the age of 35, 36 years old, tragically, right? and the story ends. but then ten years later the name grady o cummings pops up in an article and i'm going this is really weird. so we wrote a story, we ended the story with his ditch e death because it was his obituary in the "new york times."

a beautiful two-column obituary. and we're trying to come up with some words for this thing and we just didn't have enough information. so we decided let go back and research this guy. so turns out we discover that mr. o cummings faked his death. and he faked his death in the "new york times." he actually hoodwinked the company into running his obit. he did it because he was in trouble with the black panthers. and there were some death threats going on. and he took his family and he escaped to canada for a couple of months, but then he reappeared. he reappeared and he told the press, he invited the "new york times," he invited amsterdam news. they showed up and covered it. they said he faked it, it was all a hoax. the "new york times" didn't show up and cover it. and it turns out after this book closed, this is something i can only tell people in person, after the book closed we had run

a quick article about this in the "times" and i got a call from an 80-something-year-old former "times" living in london who remembered. actually, i have it in here in the story because i'll never remember these words, but he called up, got arthur geld in the executive editor on the phone and said it was all fake. i faked the whole thing. and gelb apparently came flailing down to the newsroom to clint knowles who was then the politics editor at the time and said i just got this call from this guy named o cummings and says he faked the whole thing. he said he called to say that he faked his obituary and he was very much alive. arthur again said, concentrating on the story, again, still concentrating this on his story he was writing, clay replied, don't believe a word he says. can't be trusted.

and the "times" left it at that. they never ran the correction. >> never did. >> in fact until this ran, we ran this short piece on it in february, right? >> yep. >> we corrected it how many years later? >> we corrected it 48 years after the fact. and when damian and i discovered this whole thing, we were running into the standards editor because we had the oldest correction ever. we were so excited. and they really look the standards editors are thinking, what should we do, should we run a correction, the way to properly correct this is to correct with a story rather than run an official "new york times" correction. so, yes, turns out he died. >> i was going to say -- >> we did call up his death certificate. he's really dead. it was a fascinating discovery. and i did go to the editor about

it and said it's only the second known case of a faked obituary. >> wow. >> i hope to discover more. we'll see. we'll see what else we can find. >> well, i think we have some time. thank you, ladies, this is fantastic. [ applause ] i wanted to leave room for a few questions if anyone has some questions? yes. this wonderful woman. >> thank you for a fascinating program. as you were talking, and i'm a retired finance executive, i was thinking about the cost of all those rolls of film. because i can remember trying to buy rolls of film years ago and hoping i had enough money. you mentioned someone who went on 100 rolls in one weekend, i'm thinking that's like $2,000. who paid for all that? >> oh, the advertisers.

you know, i don't know. i came to the "times" in the digital age, so it's very different. but i would imagine the paper was stacked with ads. and there was plenty of money. i also imagine the companies probably got discounts. they didn't pay what you would pay for a roll of film when buying in bulk. but, yeah, it was big -- >> that begs the question for me in terms of, you know, the photographers having to turn in all of this material. did you all come across in correspondence from them saying, you know, these are sort of work for hire kind of things but did they ever have any of their -- you know, want some of those photographs? have you come across any where they were published in other monographs by the photographs? >> not necessarily. the thing i did come across is there was a period where the company was calling a lot of this stuff for space and the photographers were extremely

worried about that. and many of them stole the film, their important film. however, over the course of many, many years now that we've been working on projects like this and the blog and other things that the "times" is doing in terms of restoration and preservation of photos, they've given back. many of the photographers have reached out and said, you know, i have about 800 rolls of film here that belong to you guys, do you want them? yes, bring them back. so it was a good thing that they preserved them. they protected it. there's also a period where this stuff was stored in a way that it was close to the loading docks, there was a lot of traffic and prints especially would get lifted, you know, print of marilyn monroe there, hey, that's great, i'll take that. >> i have so many questions, but i want to hear from the audience. is there someone else? i thought i saw a hand. >> i used to work at a photo library in the "los angeles times." and i'm always concerned about

storage because, i mean, film especially that stuff is very fragile. >> yep. >> so what condition -- >> it's in excellent condition. and it's in some basement which never changes temperature. it's not a climate controlled room per se. there's two sets. there's the prints and the negatives and they're stored in two different spaces. actually, the negatives are in two -- technically three different spaces because the more modern collection is on a different floor. but it is locked behind, you know, a keyed room. and it's well taken care of by it curators. it's not in any sort of, you know, white sleeved container. but what's so fascinating is it's packed in so tight and rarely touched that we think that's helped preserve it. there was a flood there about a year ago, there was a leak in the building and there happened

to be so many boxes stacked on top that when the water came down it just kind of went around and it was packed in so tight that almost nothing got damaged. we opened up the boxes, there was a few that were stuck together but the film -- the paper, excuse me, at the time, we just washed it, hung it to dry and pressed it back flat and dry again. yeah, it's very fortunate. >> rolls of older film just destroyed. >> so everything that's left is safety film. there's none of the flammable film left, i think that probably all deteriorated long ago. >> yes, i see some questions here. >> thank you very much. when you saw and selected the photos, did it change your perception of what or any

preconceived notions object what you were going to find or anything about african-american history or anything about -- in other words, internalizing what you saw. did it alter any of your perception what you thought? >> absolutely. no doubt. i had no idea what to really expect. i didn't expect such a broad history. i thought -- i only knew what i knew. i knew what i only saw. i knew of rosa parks, of the pictures we've seen of rosa parks. i didn't know shirley chisolm went out and was a census taker. and i didn't know why she did it. i think that's another fascinating part. when you look at these pictures and you understand why people did what they did, and that was the biggest discovery for me. absolutely. >> you, question?

>> you know, i think it was interesting for me to think about how we as journalists did these, i think that was interesting to me. i mean, there are also many discoveries for me as well just in terms of doing the research, but i think what was interesting to me was to think about the institution and the roll that we play make visible or not and i think that's the thing that really stuck with me. >> self-reflection about the "times" responsibility for keeping things on scene, seems like there are two dimensions i would love to hear your thoughts about. one is that just seeing photos

at the funeral home, there was a huge interest amongst historians in wanting to explore far broader and deeper than you've been able to capture in one book, same with malcolm x, you would expect historians would now want to absorb the visual imagery that's been hidden in a different kind of way than you've been able to do. so the question is, are people now going to come towards you saying we want to gain access to the archives a little bit more quickly? and the other big question is, how many other unseen histories of immigration, of other topics are just waiting to be drawn upon. >> you know, what's so interesting is that this project which was such a huge success, you know, of course immediately spawned other projects. and darcy can tell you about

some of the work she did and it's still being done. and i think that really this is a resource -- i mean, i think newspapers around the country, unfortunately a lot of newspapers have like regional newspapers and their archives in terms of just going back into communities it's such an important resource. i'm actually curious, i've done a bunch of historical research outside of this, so i don't know whether -- you know, i don't even know, corporate archives are not necessarily just open to the public, so i don't know what the response would be if historian came knocking. i'm not sure actually. >> they do come knocking. there's an archivist there, jeff roth, and he responds to calls individually. but he's one person. the one thing i think what is important about what we did here with this project and the projects that followed was that for a long time organizations would come into the "new york times" and offer buy the collection. we'll give you x amount of money

for it and digitize it for you and don't worry about it. thankfully the "times" have a good sense to never get rid of their collection because that never seemed to work for any organization that did it. and they held onto it. and i think that they're understanding its value in its use by creating books like this, by using it for their own journalism, by using it for future stories. i think they see it will now pay off holding onto it. it's enormous and it costs them money to keep it. it's not free to keep it in the basement. and it's not free to pay the employees who have to do the work with it. but i think utilization of this collection is the best possible thing that could happen to it. >> any other questions?

i thought i saw a question up here from the young lady. >> how did he -- how did he get a word out that he was dead? >> oh, that's a very good question. >> that is a good question. >> it's a good question. and for those of you who haven't guessed, this is my daughter sidney. she's asked, she's been a very big help in this book as i know your children have too. he wrote what they call a press release. and he sent it to the writers at the "times" and he convinced them. >> fake news. >> yes, early fake news. and the writers believed it because why would somebody lie

about their death? that's exactly how that happened. but that's a good question. >> yes. thank you. well, i think that, you know, you all have done a remarkable yeomen's job here. and i want to give you another round of applause and remind everyone -- [ applause ] -- this phenomenal book that is just a fraction of the archives and the discovery. and it sounds like there are multiple opportunities for more to be discovered and uncovered. so thank you so much. thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you all. >> you're watching american history tv all weekend every weekend on c-span3.

to join the conversation, like us on facebook at c-spanhistory. tonight on "the communicators" we're at bell labs in murry hill, new jersey, where they conducted advance communication research. >> i guess on the forefront probably the most exciting is 5g communication. >> which is? >> so 5g is an interesting thing because it's been 100 years since we had first wireless communication this has changed our species. this is what we do, that's what all wireless communication is. what we want to do is we want to go to a new era of communication and that era of communication is direct beam communication so as opposed to broadcasting signal everywhere, we want to target the beam at individuals. the reason we want to do this is because our thirst for data is never ending, so we always want more and more and we are saturated our spectrum at lower

frequencies so we have to go to higher frequencies. and these higher frequencies have many other challenges. one of the challenges is signal lost is too much. so we can't do broadcast in traditional sense. if i want to talk to you, i have to aim directly at you and send you a chunk of data and get some data from you and move to the next person. so this is a completely changing paradigm in communication. and with that of course huge set of challenges. the entire wireless industry is very excited about this. >> watch "the communicators" tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span2. american history tv is on c-span3 every weekend featuring museum tours, archived films and programs on the presidency, the civil war and more. here's a clip from a recent program. >> if you have already been taught by these writers who

suspect your government anyway and then you see your government doing things that as far as you're concerned any sensible person would see as either unconstitutional or dangerous, taxing you when they don't represent you, not letting you have a trial by jury, keeping you from expanding westward to get further away from their control, making the judges subject to removal any time they want to get rid of. putting troops in the colonies when there's nobody to fight but you. helping the church of england get bigger and more powerful here when everybody knows it's just another quasi governmental body. you're going to start worrying. and although all of this stuff looks really stupid from the view in england, it doesn't look stupid to you. >> you can watch this and other american history programs on our website where all our video is

archived. that's c-span.org/history. >> during world war ii the united states army air forces formed a group of african-american military pilots, they were known as the tuskegee airmen. next, jeremy paul amick, author of "together as one" legacy of james shipley joined by the now 94-year-old mr. shipley to talk about his wartime experiences. the kansas city public library hosted this event. it's just over 50 minutes. good evening, ladies and gentlemen. welcome to the kansas city public library. i'm deputy director carrie kucagn, we're so happy you're here tonight. i want to let you know tonight is our final program for 2017. can you believe it? it's kind of bittersweet. anyway, if you're new here, if you've never been